Many companies today create strategic business growth plans. However, the process doesn’t bear any fruits. This means the company wasted time and resources to develop a strategy that doesn’t bring in any significant solutions or changes.
Planning often goes wrong for numerous reasons. One of which is a poorly executed or designed action plan. A well-designed action plan is the core tool of strategic business planning.
Ensure that your business growth strategies don’t include vague ideas or haughty goals. A strategic plan without clear steps to reach your goals is unrealistic and more likely to fail.
Below are six business growth strategies your company should integrate this year.
1. Penetrate the Market
Market penetration is an integral part of increasing your product’s market share. This is especially important for startups and new businesses. It’s also the best way to promote your company’s new products.
Coming up with a strategy to penetrate an already existing market will help you prepare and plan for your company’s future growth.
There are a few ways you can increase your business’s market penetration. These include:
- Adjusting your product’s pricing to attract new clients
- Updating and altering your products and services to ensure they serve your current customer base
- Developing new products and services to attract new customers
- Channeling additional resources into your advertising and marketing efforts
- Partnering and acquiring other businesses in your industry
- Looking at your competition to determine what they are doing better
The average marketing penetration rate for consumer products ranges from 2-6%. In comparison, that of business products range from 10-14%.
Lowering your product prices to attract customers, is a short-term business growth strategy. It helps businesses start selling products that are already on the market. It’s also a good way to introduce a new brand to the market.
Look for ways to gradually improve or increase your product and service range. However, if you can’t do this, ensure you continue to promote your existing products.
2. Expand Your Business Into New Areas
Small and mid-sized companies can benefit from expanding and growing their product lines. They can also add fresh and newer features to charm their existing clients.
Is your company experiencing a reduction in profits or sales? Are these reduced sales due to old-fashioned products or outdated technology? If this is the case, your growth plan should incorporate a product expansion strategy.
Industry leaders such as Coca-Cola have done this in the past to attract new customers. They did this by launching their Cherry Coke product in 1985. This product helped them outperform their competitors and capture the interest of more people.
Expanding your company into new areas is an essential part of any business growth strategy. As a business owner, it’s essential to avoid placing all your eggs in a single basket.
Most companies only rely on one business model, selling strategy, or product. But what will happen when the need for that single product ends, or the strategy fails? Sadly, this is how most startups and mid-sized organizations fail.
Below are essential tips you should follow to expand your business into new areas:
Include New Products Into Your Existing Collection
This is a challenging strategy to execute. That’s because you will need to pinpoint which complementary products or services your clients may need. You will also need to know how much your clients are willing to spend on these new products or services.
Next, you will need to figure out whether you can sell these new services and products to profit your business. The first step for a successful product launch is conducting thorough market research.
Conduct surveys and ask your current clients what they think about the new products. The survey should also include potential prices for the new products. When conducting your market research, ensure you focus on your manufacture and delivery costs, consumer demand, and how to sell.
Sell More Existing Products to Your Current Customer Base
If you can’t create a new product, you should try selling more existing products to your current clients. Start by analyzing the market and segmenting different consumers. This will help you focus your marketing and sales efforts on the right consumer segment.
Your metrics and analysis will split consumers into different segments. These segments could be divided based on gender, age, buying history, and location. This way, you can easily analyze your client’s potential profitability when selling them your products.
Look Into New Delivery and Sales Channels
This is one of the best business growth strategies. The right sales and delivery channels could transform your business into a success and help you reach your bottom line. The internet is one such example.
Millions of small companies worldwide have transformed their sales and delivery channels to include online marketing and e-commerce. Thus, by taking advantage of these opportunities, they can now reach a bigger audience, increasing their sales and ultimately growing their business.
Target a New Consumer Market
Most businesses conduct targeted marketing to advertise their products to specific market segments. These market segments are divided based on demographics such as gender and age. They are also divided based on psychographics such as shared activities, interests, and values.
However, there are also new market segments that would also be interested in your products and services. To expand your products to new markets, you must reach the right audience using the right marketing mediums at the ideal time.
3. Using Alternative Marketing Channels
Using alternative marketing channels is the best way to ensure small business growth. Thankfully, most businesses are already utilizing more than one online channel to market and advertise their brands. However, switching between different online platforms will help you achieve better outcomes.
Today’s three biggest online marketing channels include social media marketing, creating a business website, and email marketing. According to research, over 54% of companies use email marketing, and only 48% utilize social media. On the other hand, less than 64% of startups and small companies have a functioning website.
Today, most consumers start their purchasing journey on the search engine by going through a company’s website and social media pages. If your business exclusively operates offline, it may be time to create a website and post your products and services to reach a broader audience. Recent studies have shown that businesses with both online and offline presence experience optimal growth.
Therefore, every small business should consider having a business website. If your business has high-quality products and you’re looking to increase sales, ensure you try out alternative advertising channels. These may include Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and video content to engage with your audience.
4. Create a Marketing and Advertising Strategy
A business growth chart has four stages; startup, growth and development, maturity, and rebirth or deterioration. During each of these stages, it’s essential to have the right marketing strategy to ensure your business is constantly growing. Below are essential steps you should consider when creating an ideal marketing strategy for your business:
Educate Your Audience Using the Content You Post
Website and social media content is the king of marketing. Most brands today use content that can educate customers to generate leads.
Ensure you create content such as blog posts and articles that are relevant to your target audience. Educational and reliable content can also nurture audience trust.
Personalize Your Adverts and Marketing Phrases
Conduct a market analysis to understand your audience better. What age group do they belong to? Where are they from? What do they enjoy doing during their free time?
Ensure you personalize any marketing message to fit your target audiences’ demographics. Personalization doesn’t just mean addressing a client by their name. It means tailoring your message to resonate with your target audience’s demographics.
When marketing to a younger audience, you can use phrases and words to ensure they understand your message. However, if you use the same message to an older audience, they may not comprehend the message.
Use Marketing Metrics to Drive Your Efforts
Today, online platforms such as Facebook and Google are gradually doing away with manual bidding abilities. This means that they are adopting and taking control of audience targeting. Their algorithms have also learned to distinguish between subpar and high-quality content.
Google algorithms understand which articles and advert images will have the best conversion and click-through rates. You can use your performance metrics to understand how your efforts are performing. This will also help you pinpoint any gaps in your strategies.
Ensure you integrate a data-driven decision-making approach into your strategy.
5. Partnerships and Acquisitions
Sometimes, partnering with other companies is an ideal way of growing your business. You can do this by acquiring and merging with other companies. As long as the arrangement is beneficial to both parties, the alliance could be a win-win situation.
Such an arrangement will also combine resources and boost the business, fostering growth. Depending on your industry and the type of business, the possibilities are endless. Some benefits could include additional resources in terms of skillset, human resources, knowledge, technology, and equipment.
For example, you could reduce the commercial risk and workloads by merging with another company. Partnerships are ideal for sole traders. That’s because they can collaborate and share clients to complete difficult projects.
For instance, builders, electricians, and carpenters can partner to complete a construction project. They can also help each other gain traction.
By partnering with non-competitive and complementary companies and businesses, you may get new customers and venture into new market segments. However, before partnering with another individual, have your lawyers draft a comprehensive contract. Such a contract will protect your company in case of any unexpected issues.
6. Develop an Action Plan for the Business Development Strategy
An action plan is the heart of your business’s growth and development strategy. Ensure you create a well-thought-out action plan, and your initiatives are realistic.
Your action plan should include specified actions and tactics. These tactics should deliver your business’s strategic objectives.
An action plan acts like a road map for your business leaders and team members. It helps them know what to do next and where to go after a specific step. Below are essential tips you should employ to create an effective action plan:
- Remember to involve your team
- Create a list of solid details for each point of action
- Include a timeline for execution of action points
- Designate the available resources
- Create a metrics and follow-up process to track the progress of the plan
- Communicate with your team your action plan
- Keep your plan flexible, agile, and responsive to any problems that arise
Start involving your team from the start of the development process. Your team is the backbone of your business’s success. They handle your clients and ensure the products and services are up to standard.
Regularly discussing the progress of your action plan is the best way to keep the plan in everyone’s mind. You can also consider business growth consulting to create the best business growth strategy. Outsourcing will give you access to trained and experienced business strategy consultants.
Ensure You Incorporate the Above Strategies to Ensure Business Growth
By creating a concrete business growth strategy, you can revive your business. Revival could also mean injecting new life into it.
However, remember that different businesses require different strategies or plans. Thus, look for the right strategy for your business and ensure it works.
Incorporate any of the above six business growth strategies into your business. Remember to tailor the strategy based on your business needs and your bottom line. A well-created and executed business development strategy will help your business win a significant share in your industry market.
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